A Pakistani Muslim NGO said in June that every year between 100 to 700 Christian women, ‘usually between the ages of 12 and 25 are abducted, converted to Islam, and married to the abductor or third party’.
In its investigative report ‘Forced Marriages and Forced Conversions in the Christian Community of Pakistan’ the Movement for Solidarity and Peace (MSP) identified a pattern. In most of the abduction cases the parents of Christian victims file a police report, but in response the abductor’s relatives or friends file another police complaint on behalf of the abducted Christian woman, claiming that she wilfully married and converted to Islam, and that her parents are now ‘harassing’ her unlawfully.
Sexual violence
The report notes that after abduction, Christian women are subjected to ‘sexual violence, rape, forced prostitution, human trafficking and sale, or other domestic abuse’ so when produced before the court and asked to testify if they were abducted, these women (and sometimes children) give a statement in favour of their captors for fear of threats to their life, and those of their family.
